Toa have been producing professional sound reinforcement equipment for some years now and, although very well known in the States, there are a surprising number of people in this country who have never heard of them. I have a suspicion that these new microphones could well be the turning point for Toa's fortunes over here. For review we have an assortment of electret condenser and dynamic (moving coil) models, so I'll deal with them in two batches.

Electret Condenser Mikes

The mikes I borrowed were from the K series range which all feature fixed charge back-electret elements. For those of you unfamiliar with this type of mike a few well chosen words may be helpful. The system works on the principle that the capacitance of a capacitor is dependent on several factors — including the spacing between the plates. If the capacitor plates have a fixed charge between them, then movement of one of the plates (the diaphragm) will be accurately reflected by a change in voltage. The accuracy of this system is such that the diaphragm can be very thin which makes the microphones extremely sensitive, particularly to the transients that a standard dynamic microphone would miss.

The Toa K series mikes all feature a 4μm (4/1000 of a millimetre) thick gold vaporised diaphragm, dual power supply option — battery or phantom power (9-52V dc) and a cardioid pickup pattern.

The K1 is designed as a general purpose microphone featuring a selector switch to choose one of two voicings. Setting the switch to M extends the low frequency response down to 30Hz. This makes it particularly useful for recording musical instruments, but in particular rhythm and percussion. This low frequency response would foul things up for the vocalist, however, as the close up use of the mike would lead to booming and a muffling of the sound. The second voicing, V, seems to overcome these problems very well by rolling off the low end response at about 60Hz. Having a fairly powerful voice I was still able to cause a little bit of boom so I tried out the pop shield that came supplied with the mike. Normally I abhor the use of these things as, whilst eliminating pop, they seem to muddy the sound making a complete mockery of the manufacturer's top end specification. This feeling was not helped any when I opened the box to find a peculiar, angular shaped pop shield. The main thing this pop shield did was to totally reform my prejudice against the species. It was completely transparent musically and simply eliminated the pop and lower end boom whilst faithfully doing justice to the mike's 20kHz top end. With the pop shield fitted the sound reproduction quality was absolutely superb in every circumstance. I could throw at it, but for miking up toms and snare it was absolutely out of this world giving a totally transparent sound that could be processed to my heart's content.

K2: £155.25

The K2 looks identical to the K1 in every respect except that the K1's three position (off v-m) was replaced by a simple on-off switch with a small indicator LED above it. This reduced the battery life (AA alkaline) from 700 hours on the K1 to around 200 hours on the K2. It also gave rise to another discovery — the on-off switches on these mikes don't actually switch off the battery, so the battery must be removed after use — not a bad idea; if you've ever had a battery leak in any equipment you'll know what I mean. The lack of battery switching does carry a bonus in that the on-off switching of the mikes is particularly quiet.

The K2's response seems to be superior to the K1 switched in the M mode, having a lot more oomph in the 3kHz to 10kHz range. This gives a bell-life clarity when recording percussion, particularly cymbals.

K3: £155.25

The K3 shares its looks with the other two mikes in that it is pencil slim, finished in matt dark grey and links up via a 20 foot XLR to XLR lead giving a balanced line, 250 impedance output. From the moment you plug it in it becomes very obvious that this is a vocalist's mike par excellence offering a wide dynamic range, very smooth response and extremely good rejection of side and back noise. Feedback suppression was excellent and the handling noise was amongst the lowest I've come across at any price. The whole thing looked and sounded just right.

Conclusions

The K series of mikes left me with an overriding impression of quality — quality of manufacture, quality of finish and above all quality of sound. The pop shield turned out to be a real find, the best I've come across. I can't think of any reason why you should ever remove it from the mike. Toa have obviously put a lot of thought into this range — if you're in the market for mikes don't buy before you've checked these ones out.

J3: £121.90

The final mike I looked at was the J3 dynamic cardioid microphone. Although it looked very smart with its matt grey finish and spherical pop shield, I was prepared to be disappointed as I'd just finished looking at the K mikes. In the end I was very pleasantly surprised. As a vocal mike it gave a nice rich, clean sound with a marked absence of handling noise. As its bottom end response seemed very respectable I tried miking up a bass drum with it and found it made a very commendable job of it. I was left with nagging impression that Toa had made a mistake in pricing this mike. Somehow they've printed the trade price in mistake for the retail price — it's certainly a great buy for the money. Check it out before they spot they've blundered.

Toa Professional Series Microphones - RRP: from £101